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“People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don't find myself saying, "Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner." I don't try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds.” (Carl Rogers)

Saturday, 22 November 2014

Section II “permits a diverse assortment of
teacher-facilitators to tell their own stories of excitement, frustration and
reward as they work to humanize their classrooms” – along with Rogers
clarifying and illustrating some of the meanings.

1.A Sixth Grade Teacher Experiments

This chapter reports on and presents ‘A Teacher’s Diary’ by
Barbara J. Schiel, which “will release other teachers to be adventuresome and
honest”.

1.1A Teacher’s Diary: Barbara
J. Shiel

Barbara’s diary reflects on a difficult, undisciplined,
apathetic class and uncooperative or defensive parents. She initiated a
programme of student-centred teaching with a very high level of freedom for the
children and very low levels of control on the part of the teacher. The
experiment developed as two groups, a large non-directed one, and a smaller
teacher-directed one for those unable to find direction (and which group
continued to shrink in size as children realised they preferred non-directivity).

The programme was very successful and resulted in greater
opportunities “for self-growth, not only creativity, initiative, imagination,
but self-discipline, self-acceptance, and understanding.”

1.2Comments on the Experiment

Rogers points out some of the salient transferable features.

1.2.1Commitment

This is essential, as is conviction - it is not simply ‘a
new method’.

1.2.2Internal locus of
evaluation

It was her own scheme, her experiment - “By being open to
the evidence in the situation including her own feelings and intuitions, and
basing her judgements on that evidence, she kept herself flexible in the
situation. She was not trying to please someone else or follow some ‘correct’
model. She was living and acting and deciding in a fluid situation. She was
even aware of the elements most threatening to her and faed these frightening
aspects of the experience openly in herself.”

1.2.3Aware of the realities

Not ignoring but absorbing institutional requirements.

1.2.4Group Problem solving

She put her trust in the capacity of the group to solve
problems.

1.2.5Experience

This can bring assurance, but also “a new teacher would have
less to unlearn.”

1.2.6Support

Backing and security make risk-taking easier (and don’t
assure no support - administrators are human too)

1.2.7Communicability to others

This is about helping teachers to properly grasp the
learnings here.

1.3Summary

“Shiel’s experience is most certainly not a model for another
teacher to follow. Indeed, one of the most meaningful elements in this account
is that she risked giving freedom to her pupils only so far as she dared, only
so far as she felt reasonably comfortable. Thus, it is an account of a
changing, risky approach to a classroom situation by a changing, risk-taking
human being, who felt at times defeated and at times very moved and stimulated
by the consequences of what she was attempting.”